El Birdos

El Birdos PDF Author: Doug Feldmann
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786455357
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
In 1953, August A. Busch purchased the St. Louis Cardinals for nearly four million dollars. His dream included not only the best players money could buy but a brand new Busch Stadium in downtown St. Louis. The early sixties found Busch working on both, and by May 1966, when the new Busch Stadium was opened, the St. Louis Cardinals were on the cusp of greatness. A world championship would follow in 1967, and in 1968 the Cardinals battled the Tigers in a classic seven-game series, narrowly losing their bid for back-to-back titles. This volume looks back at the outstanding Cardinal teams of the 1967 and 1968 seasons. Beginning with the ownership shift in the early 1950s, it examines the events leading up to the opening of the new stadium and tracks the various player trades, policy changes and inside dealings of baseball that produced one of the era's great teams. The effects of Branch Rickey's farm system on both the franchise's success and the sport of baseball are discussed, as are the rumblings of labor trouble that would directly involve one of the Cardinals' own. An appendix contains detailed statistics from the 1967 and 1968 seasons. An index and period photographs are also included.

El Birdos

El Birdos PDF Author: Doug Feldmann
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786455357
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
In 1953, August A. Busch purchased the St. Louis Cardinals for nearly four million dollars. His dream included not only the best players money could buy but a brand new Busch Stadium in downtown St. Louis. The early sixties found Busch working on both, and by May 1966, when the new Busch Stadium was opened, the St. Louis Cardinals were on the cusp of greatness. A world championship would follow in 1967, and in 1968 the Cardinals battled the Tigers in a classic seven-game series, narrowly losing their bid for back-to-back titles. This volume looks back at the outstanding Cardinal teams of the 1967 and 1968 seasons. Beginning with the ownership shift in the early 1950s, it examines the events leading up to the opening of the new stadium and tracks the various player trades, policy changes and inside dealings of baseball that produced one of the era's great teams. The effects of Branch Rickey's farm system on both the franchise's success and the sport of baseball are discussed, as are the rumblings of labor trouble that would directly involve one of the Cardinals' own. An appendix contains detailed statistics from the 1967 and 1968 seasons. An index and period photographs are also included.

Ebony

Ebony PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
EBONY is the flagship magazine of Johnson Publishing. Founded in 1945 by John H. Johnson, it still maintains the highest global circulation of any African American-focused magazine.

Ebony

Ebony PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
EBONY is the flagship magazine of Johnson Publishing. Founded in 1945 by John H. Johnson, it still maintains the highest global circulation of any African American-focused magazine.

Roger Maris

Roger Maris PDF Author: Tom Clavin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416596828
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
Tom Clavin and Danny Peary chronicle the life and career of baseball’s “natural home run king” in the first definitive biography of Roger Maris—including a brand-new chapter to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of his record breaking season. Roger Maris may be the greatest ballplayer no one really knows. In 1961, the soft-spoken man from the frozen plains of North Dakota enjoyed one of the most amazing seasons in baseball history, when he outslugged his teammate Mickey Mantle to become the game’s natural home-run king. It was Mantle himself who said, "Roger was as good a man and as good a ballplayer as there ever was." Yet Maris was vilified by fans and the press and has never received his due from biographers—until now. Tom Clavin and Danny Peary trace the dramatic arc of Maris’s life, from his boyhood in Fargo through his early pro career in the Cleveland Indians farm program, to his World Series championship years in New York and beyond. At the center is the exciting story of the 1961 season and the ordeal Maris endured as an outsider in Yankee pinstripes, unloved by fans who compared him unfavorably to their heroes Ruth and Mantle, relentlessly attacked by an aggressive press corps who found him cold and inaccessible, and treated miserably by the organization. After the tremendous challenge of breaking Ruth’s record was behind him, Maris ultimately regained his love of baseball as a member of the world champion St. Louis Cardinals. And over time, he gained redemption in the eyes of the Yankee faithful. With research drawn from more than 130 interviews with Maris’s teammates, opponents, family, and friends, as well as 16 pages of photos, some of which have never before been seen, this timely and poignant biography sheds light on an iconic figure from baseball’s golden era—and establishes the importance of his role in the game’s history.

An October to Remember 1968

An October to Remember 1968 PDF Author: Brendan Donley
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1683582039
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
An October to Remember 1968: The Tigers-Cardinals World Series as Told by the Men Who Played in It recalls one of baseball's most celebrated championship series from the voices of the players who still remain--a collected narrative from a bygone era of major-league baseball as they reflect fifty years later. Modeled after Lawrence S. Ritter's celebrated book, The Glory of Their Times--for which the author traversed the country to record stories of baseball's deadball era--An October to Remember 1968 will likewise preserve the days of baseball past, gathering the memories of the remaining players of the great Tigers and Cardinals teams to assemble their accounts into a vibrant baseball collection. The 1968 World Series came at a time of great cultural change--the fading days of fans dressing up for ballgames, the first years of widespread color TV--and was an historic matchup of two legendary teams, pitting star power head-to-head and going the distance of seven hard-fought games. From the voices of the players themselves, An October to Remember 1968 illustrates in detail what it was like to be a 1968 Tiger, a 1968 Cardinal: what it was like to win it all and to lose it all: what it was like to face Bob Gibson peering in from the mound, Al Kaline digging in at the plate; what it was like, in the player's own words, to remember the days of that most special period in the history of America's national pastime.

Spirit of '67

Spirit of '67 PDF Author: Thomas J. Whalen
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442233176
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Using the colorful and tumultuous 1960s as a backdrop, acclaimed author Thomas J. Whalen’s Spirit of ’67: The Cardiac Kids, El Birdos, and the World Series That Captivated America shows how the Red Sox and Cardinals waged an epic battle for baseball supremacy that captured the imagination of weary Americans looking for escape from the urban riots, racial turmoil, and antiwar protests that were roiling 1960s society. “How many people ever do anything that makes so many people happy?” Sox pitcher Gary Bell asked years later, in reference to their classic autumn clash. The book examines the unique bond that each team had with its own fanbase, going back to each franchise’s chaotic beginning at the turn of the twentieth century. Relating issues of ethnicity, politics, class, and economics, Whalen sets out to reveal the exactly what was at stake in the 1967 fall classic, and how echoes from that unforgettable season still ring through both cities, and American culture, to this day.

Boom and Bust in St. Louis

Boom and Bust in St. Louis PDF Author: Jon David Cash
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476638969
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
The St. Louis Cardinals, despite winning more World Series than any Major League franchise except for the New York Yankees, have seen their share of dry spells when they were shut out of the postseason. Like the American economy, the Cardinals have seen their fortunes cycle through prolonged ups and downs, with booms in 1885-1888, 1926-1946, 1964-1968, 1982-1987 and 1996-2011, and busts in 1889-1925, 1947-1963, 1969-1981 and 1988-1995. Drawing on years of research, this book chronicles the Cardinals' periods of success and failure and explains the reasons behind them.

Summer of '68

Summer of '68 PDF Author: Tim Wendel
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0306822482
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
The extraordinary story of the 1968 baseball season--when the game was played to perfection even as the country was being pulled apart at the seams From the beginning, '68 was a season rocked by national tragedy and sweeping change. Opening Day was postponed and later played in the shadow of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s funeral. That summer, as the pennant races were heating up, the assassination of Robert Kennedy was later followed by rioting at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. But even as tensions boiled over and violence spilled into the streets, something remarkable was happening in major league ballparks across the country. Pitchers were dominating like never before, and with records falling and shut-outs mounting, many began hailing '68 as "The Year of the Pitcher." In Summer of '68, Tim Wendel takes us on a wild ride through a season that saw such legends as Bob Gibson, Denny McLain, Don Drysdale, and Luis Tiant set new standards for excellence on the mound, each chasing perfection against the backdrop of one of the most divisive and turbulent years in American history. For some players, baseball would become an insular retreat from the turmoil encircling them that season, but for a select few, including Gibson and the defending champion St. Louis Cardinals, the conflicts of '68 would spur their performances to incredible heights and set the stage for their own run at history. Meanwhile in Detroit -- which had burned just the summer before during one of the worst riots in American history -- '68 instead found the city rallying together behind a colorful Tigers team led by McLain, Mickey Lolich, Willie Horton, and Al Kaline. The Tigers would finish atop the American League, setting themselves on a highly anticipated collision course with Gibson's Cardinals. And with both teams' seasons culminating in a thrilling World Series for the ages -- one team playing to establish a dynasty, the other fighting to help pull a city from the ashes -- what ultimately lay at stake was something even larger: baseball's place in a rapidly changing America that would never be the same. In vivid, novelistic detail, Summer of '68 tells the story of this unforgettable season -- the last before rule changes and expansion would alter baseball forever -- when the country was captivated by the national pastime at the moment it needed the game most.

Mike Torrez

Mike Torrez PDF Author: Jorge Iber
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476624453
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
The history of baseball is filled with players whose careers were defined by one bad play. Mike Torrez is remembered as the pitcher who gave up the infamous three-run homer to Bucky "Bleeping" Dent in the 1978 playoffs tie-breaker between the Red Sox and Yankees. Yet Torrez's life added up to much more than his worst moment on the mound. Coming from a vibrant Mexican American community that settled in Topeka, Kansas, in the early 1900s, he made it to the Majors by his own talent and efforts, with the help of an athletic program for Mexican youth that spread through the Midwest, Texas and Mexico during the 20th century. He was in the middle of many transformative events of the 1970s--such as the rise of free agency--and was an ethnic role model in the years before the "Fernandomania" of 1981. This book covers Torrez's life and career as the winningest Mexican American pitcher in Major League history.

Ebony

Ebony PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
EBONY is the flagship magazine of Johnson Publishing. Founded in 1945 by John H. Johnson, it still maintains the highest global circulation of any African American-focused magazine.